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Is this the Candidate who picks up where Bernie Sanders left off?

I've been following the 2020 Presidential campaign of Andrew Yang fairly closely because he has a political vision that solves so many of America's problems. He delivers on all of Bernie's inspiring promises and puts the country on a constructive path. Like Bernie, he too will be running on the Democratic Party ticket, however, his political philosophy transcends their neoliberal corruption. If you're not familiar with Andrew Yang, this is how the New York Times describes him:

Among the many, many Democrats who will seek the party’s presidential nomination in 2020, most probably agree on a handful of core issues: protecting DACA, rejoining the Paris climate agreement, unraveling President Trump’s tax breaks for the wealthy.

Only one of them will be focused on the robot apocalypse.

That candidate is Andrew Yang, a well-connected New York businessman who is mounting a longer-than-long-shot bid for the White House. Mr. Yang, a former tech executive who started the nonprofit organization Venture for America, believes that automation and advanced artificial intelligence will soon make millions of jobs obsolete — yours, mine, those of our accountants and radiologists and grocery store cashiers. He says America needs to take radical steps to prevent Great Depression-level unemployment and a total societal meltdown, including handing out trillions of dollars in cash.

“All you need is self-driving cars to destabilize society,” Mr. Yang, 43, said over lunch at a Thai restaurant in Manhattan last month, in his first interview about his campaign. In just a few years, he said, “we’re going to have a million truck drivers out of work who are 94 percent male, with an average level of education of high school or one year of college.”

“That one innovation,” he continued, “will be enough to create riots in the street. And we’re about to do the same thing to retail workers, call center workers, fast-food workers, insurance companies, accounting firms.”

To fend off the coming robots, Mr. Yang is pushing what he calls a “Freedom Dividend,” a monthly check for $1,000 that would be sent to every American from age 18 to 64, regardless of income or employment status. These payments, he says, would bring everyone in America up to approximately the poverty line, even if they were directly hit by automation. Medicare and Medicaid would be unaffected under Mr. Yang’s plan, but people receiving government benefits such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program could choose to continue receiving those benefits, or take the $1,000 monthly payments instead.

There will be a fairly long earning curve on Wang's proposal, just as there was on all of Bernie's "socialist" ideas, so he's getting started early. But once the People understand what they are hearing (and what they are facing, otherwise) there may be a populist groundswell. Americans are being robbed of their rightful inheritance of this civilization. It was left to all of us by all the people who put their hard work into building it. They did not leave to corporations and politicians to asset strip and privatize its value, and then charge us again for something that was already paid for. Where is our profit sharing? Where are our dividends? Meanwhile, I suspect that the elites may like it even more because it rescues capitalism (and them). “I’m a capitalist,” says Yang, “and I believe that universal basic income is necessary for capitalism to continue.”

Yang, who is also an author, has up-branded Universal Basic Income, a policy that is being vigorously debated, discussed, and defended in academic circles, think-tank, and newspapers. It's an old idea that has finally arrived, gaining great favor among the Silicon Valley technologists. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Ng, Pierre Omidyar, and Ray Kurzwell are among the many early adopters that are expressing support for the idea of a universal basic income. Y Combinator, the influential start-up incubator, is currently running basic income experiments with 3,000 participants in two states.

Andrew Yang points out that these payments would bring everyone in America up to the poverty line, at least. I see it a little differently. The payments would allow all American to purchase the basic Human Rights that are denied them in the US, such as the right to affordable housing and freedom from hunger. Once they have the necessary Human Rights to secure their day-to-day survival, they can stop scrambling for the next meal and spend time exploring their ambitions and dreams and developing a fulfilling life for themselves.

Because the top question here and elsewhere is invariably "How will we pay for it?" I've added a short interview where Andrew Yang explains it. That part of the puzzle has always been a happy story. See for yourself:

Comments

Doing something for your money gives people pride, identity, and a sense of accomplishment.

And that's what got us to be slaves in the first place.

Every century is going to see more and more work being done by fewer human hands.

I mean, if we need people to work, ditch the forklift and now you have 6 guys lifting things. Mundane work for the sake of work is destructive. We should be moving towards the elimination of work, not keeping it alive.

Doing something for your money gives people pride, identity, and a sense of accomplishment.

And that's what got us to be slaves in the first place.

Every century is going to see more and more work being done by fewer human hands.

I mean, if we need people to work, ditch the forklift and now you have 6 guys lifting things. Mundane work for the sake of work is destructive. We should be moving towards the elimination of work, not keeping it alive.

The capitalist part is the most frightening, considering that he coined yet another term to describe all of capitalism - Human Capitalism (what the hell is that?)

Capitalism is capitalism. It seems that individuals continue to invent modifiers to put in front of capitalism to distinguish it from each other. We have predatory capitalism, crony capitalism, now human capitalism. Please, capitalism is capitalism, it all depends on what gets the smiley-face sticker on it or not.

While the eventual automation and destruction of jobs is actually something that needs to not only be discussed, but faced head on, I'm just not feeling this guy. It feels like he's trying to save his own ass once everything hits the fan.

A Democrat and a capitalist are enough to make me not trust him. Besides, a good idea soon gets bought and amended into just one more power grab. Without wresting power from the greedy ruling class first, nothing good can or will happen. Physics requires a catastrophe and ashes from which the future of humanity, if any, will rise. We could all return to swinging on trees.

Yeah, I'm already skeptical of this guy.

1) A Democrat
2) A capitalist

The capitalist part is the most frightening, considering that he coined yet another term to describe all of capitalism - Human Capitalism (what the hell is that?)

Capitalism is capitalism. It seems that individuals continue to invent modifiers to put in front of capitalism to distinguish it from each other. We have predatory capitalism, crony capitalism, now human capitalism. Please, capitalism is capitalism, it all depends on what gets the smiley-face sticker on it or not.

While the eventual automation and destruction of jobs is actually something that needs to not only be discussed, but faced head on, I'm just not feeling this guy. It feels like he's trying to save his own ass once everything hits the fan.

Another purty suit with purty words to distract everyone and serve the top 9% just like Obama did.

Anyone who suggests that $1,000 per month would be workable is simply crazy.

Yeah, I'm already skeptical of this guy.

1) A Democrat
2) A capitalist

The capitalist part is the most frightening, considering that he coined yet another term to describe all of capitalism - Human Capitalism (what the hell is that?)

Capitalism is capitalism. It seems that individuals continue to invent modifiers to put in front of capitalism to distinguish it from each other. We have predatory capitalism, crony capitalism, now human capitalism. Please, capitalism is capitalism, it all depends on what gets the smiley-face sticker on it or not.

While the eventual automation and destruction of jobs is actually something that needs to not only be discussed, but faced head on, I'm just not feeling this guy. It feels like he's trying to save his own ass once everything hits the fan.

The capitalist part is the most frightening, considering that he coined yet another term to describe all of capitalism - Human Capitalism (what the hell is that?)

Capitalism is capitalism. It seems that individuals continue to invent modifiers to put in front of capitalism to distinguish it from each other. We have predatory capitalism, crony capitalism, now human capitalism. Please, capitalism is capitalism, it all depends on what gets the smiley-face sticker on it or not.

While the eventual automation and destruction of jobs is actually something that needs to not only be discussed, but faced head on, I'm just not feeling this guy. It feels like he's trying to save his own ass once everything hits the fan.

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Actually, the issue at stake is patriotism. You must return to your world and put an end to the Commies. All it takes are a few good men.
--Q

As long as those assumptions aren't challenged, I don't see improvement.

For example, why allow private drug companies to exist at all? The government should nationalize drug research and production. Why do we have to pay for the internet? Didn't the government invent the internet? Didn't we already pay for it?

@dfarrah
That was Aaron Swartz's point about scientific research. Apparently, that point is radical enough to cost one's life.

#9.3 are predicated on some assumptions that I simply don't agree with.

As long as those assumptions aren't challenged, I don't see improvement.

For example, why allow private drug companies to exist at all? The government should nationalize drug research and production. Why do we have to pay for the internet? Didn't the government invent the internet? Didn't we already pay for it?

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Actually, the issue at stake is patriotism. You must return to your world and put an end to the Commies. All it takes are a few good men.
--Q

@Strife Delivery
Actually, SD, I was asking a question about the article; apparently this guy thinks his ideas will save capitalism.

All this seems so outdated that it's almost hilarious that he is proposing himself as cutting-edge. I guess he's cutting edge because he talks about robots; it sure ain't his political thinking that's cutting-edge. If people can't get out of the mid-century American and European Communism vs Capitalism frame, there ain't nothing much new going on.

@The Voice In the Wilderness
That seems a peculiarly mid-twentieth-century response. Communism vs Capitalism, like Republicans vs Democrats--these binaries seem to exist in order to eradicate any thinking outside those boxes.

It's particularly unhelpful because "Communism," I'm assuming, refers to what started with Lenin reached a triumphant crescendo with Stalin, and died in the 80s. The idea that that "Communism" is the totality of what socialism can be is just wrong; it's an argument that depends on ignoring every other instance of socialism in the world ever, or reinterpreting all of them as a piece of a united Soviet imperialism.

And that begs the question of: What if there are other alternatives to capitalism than socialism? Why should we be limited to the thinking of Ike Eisenhower and Harry Truman?

Beyond all that, I am at a loss to understand how anything could work worse than capitalism, seeing as how it's going to end in around an 80% extinction rate for all life on this planet.

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
I could criticize Bernie by saying that he's trapped in the past, that his vision has no workable answer to the coming universal unemployment, but this silver spoon, born on 3rd base 5 year old? He thinks he can change the apocolypse to maintain his privilage.
A Real UBI/UMI - not this snake oil.

it seems to me this is a substantial step down even from a Social Democrat.

Detroit's Top Ten Excuses for Why this Liberal Hero couldn't do anything he promised.

1. Don't let the Perfect be the Enemy of the Good.
2. You want a Pony.
3. It's all because he doesn't have both houses of congress.
4. The Republicans obstructed him.
5. You're Racist.
6. I have a list of his successes.
7. He's playing the long game, and he HAS to wait till his second term, then he'll be free to save us.
8. Technically he ended a war.
9. We need to look forward, and not concentrate on the mistakes of the past.
10. You just hatehate dislikeare biased aren't giving him a fair chance.

French presidential candidate Benoit Hamon proposed UBI and a tax on robots. Eminently sensible: both. But people laughed and called him names—the mockers of course including dodderers here at this old folks' home—and Hamon received fewer votes than did the she-Nazi, with her comforting call for a return to the halcyon days of the 12th Century. Yeehaw.

French presidential candidate Benoit Hamon proposed UBI and a tax on robots. Eminently sensible: both. But people laughed and called him names—the mockers of course including dodderers here at this old folks' home—and Hamon received fewer votes than did the she-Nazi, with her comforting call for a return to the halcyon days of the 12th Century. Yeehaw.

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0 users have voted.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

French presidential candidate Benoit Hamon proposed UBI and a tax on robots. Eminently sensible: both. But people laughed and called him names—the mockers of course including dodderers here at this old folks' home—and Hamon received fewer votes than did the she-Nazi, with her comforting call for a return to the halcyon days of the 12th Century. Yeehaw.